


Our Sins Amid the Rubble

by Siria



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-17
Updated: 2015-03-17
Packaged: 2018-03-18 08:56:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3563729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A cup of Darjeeling, and a sullen prisoner. Peggy and Natasha meet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our Sins Amid the Rubble

**Author's Note:**

  * For [trinityofone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/trinityofone/gifts).



> A birthday gift for Trinityofone. Happy birthday, Trin! Thanks to Cate for beta duty.

Two agents led the girl through the doorway and deposited her in the chair opposite Peggy. The girl was shackled, hand and foot, and playing at being a dead weight; the chair skittered back a few inches beneath her, its legs squeaking against the polished hardwood of the decking. On Peggy's nod, the agents withdrew. 

Twenty years ago, Peggy knew, this would all have played out very differently. Twenty years ago, this would have all occurred in a purpose-built interrogation room on a remote SHIELD base. Peggy would have been the one to approach the interviewee, striding in on her tallest heels and with her lipstick immaculate. Then again, twenty years ago the Soviet Union had still existed and Peggy hadn't had a right knee riddled with arthritis. _Work with the hand you've been dealt_ , she reminded herself, and was glad that her lipstick, at least, was still impeccable. 

Peggy set her empty tea cup down on the patio table, withdrew the key from her skirt pocket, and slid it across the table. 

The girl looked up at her from under the tangled fall of her hair. An old, yellowing bruise ringed one of her eyes. Really, Peggy thought, her two had been perfect little terrors during their teenage years, when they wanted to be, and she didn't think they'd ever managed to look so perfectly sullen. 

Of course, this girl had never really been a teenager. 

"I know you could get out of those quite easily without it," Peggy said, picking up the teapot to refill her own cup, and to pour the girl one. "But consider it a courtesy. I trust Darjeeling will do?"

By the time she looked back up, the shackles were sitting neatly on the table next to the key. Peggy hadn't even heard them clink as they came off.

"Neatly done," Peggy said, sliding the second cup of tea over to the girl. "Most of the time I had to dislocate something to be able to do that. There aren't any biscuits, but this is Los Angeles, so I suppose we should just be grateful that there was proper tea to be had in the first place. Now, what would you like me to call you?"

"I don't have the schematics," the girl said. Her voice was hoarse, but her accent was still a perfectly creditable imitation of small-town Middle America: flat and unremarkable. She didn't reach for the tea; she didn't look away from Peggy. Calculating the probabilities, if Peggy had to guess. 

"Oh yes, I know." Peggy picked up her own cup, wrapping her fingers around it for the warmth as much as for anything else. She was finding it more difficult to stay warm lately, even when sitting out under the deep blue Californian sky with a blanket tucked around her. Aging may have been better than the alternative, but Peggy wasn't exactly sanguine about it. "Do you know why Agent Barton brought you here, rather than to a safe house in some other city?"

The girl made no answer. Peggy hadn't expected her to, so after a moment she continued, "My second-in-command can be sentimental at times. It's a rather American trait. They like to believe in remaking and reinvention—the self-made person casting aside the past. And so here we are." She took one of her hands off her cup and gestured behind her, at the city sprawling out below the hills and spreading towards the distant, hazy coastline. "This is the very best place in America for all that. I suspect Nicholas thought it would be symbolic."

This time when the girl spoke, her voice was a pitch-perfect imitation of Peggy's own, all trace of hoarseness gone: the Home Counties rounding out vowels that were blunted oh so slightly by almost a lifetime spent in the States. "Are you going to offer me a second chance, Director Carter? Because I've been such a _bad girl_ but I could turn myself into someone new, if _only_ I give SHIELD a chance." Her tone was wryly mocking.

Peggy set her cup down and laced her fingers together in her lap. "No. That can't be done." Or at least, Peggy had heard vague rumours from Russia, but even she still drew a line in the sand—though there were times in recent years when Peggy had felt like King Cnut, watching the tide inexorably creep up the beach to wash that line away. "I can't promise you that you'll ever be anything more than what you are right now."

The girl managed to repress the flinch almost completely, but Peggy saw it. It was of a piece with the slightly ragged cuticles, the half-inch of red regrowth at the roots of the dark brown curls, and the very fact that Barton had been able to run her to ground in Medellín. Not to mention, of course, the fact that Peggy was still breathing and the girl was still here. Peggy was 83 years old. She had no illusions that she could hold her own against a Black Widow in her prime, and certainly not against this one: the last one, the one who had been ruthless enough that she had managed to make the title her own. 

Ruthless enough, perhaps, to look at herself in the mirror and recognise that a change was needed. But then, Peggy thought, she was so very young—younger than Peggy had been when she enlisted, younger than Steve, and so many things seemed possible when you were young.

"I've met some of you before, you know," Peggy went on. "Your sisters." She thought of the last time she'd seen Dottie—after all this time, Peggy still thought of her as Dottie—silhouetted against the morning sunlight on Charles Bridge in Prague. There'd never been a chance of bringing her in from the cold. The things Dottie wanted, Peggy could never have given her. 

All of the sullen, slumping posture was gone now—the girl was a bowstring drawn too tight. 

"That's why you came, isn't it?" Peggy asked, because she wasn't inclined to think the theft of the blueprints had been anything other than a calculated ruse. "You've heard talk about some of our previous recruits." SHIELD didn't exactly advertise that it had more than one former Widow among its ranks, but it would have been obvious to anyone paying attention. 

The girl tilted her head, a non-committal gesture. 

"Your tea will be getting cold," Peggy said, picking back up her own cup and taking a sip. "And you still haven't told me what you'd like me to call you."

"You know what I am," the girl said. This time, her accent was American once more, but huskier—closer, Peggy suspected, to her usual speaking voice.

"And you misunderstand me," Peggy replied. "I'm not telling you that you're a lost cause. I'm just refusing to lie to you. We none of us can escape our pasts. History is not a chrysalis one can shed when it gets too small. Even if you agree to join SHIELD, you will always be the person who has done the things you've done. That's true for all of us." Compromise after compromise, Peggy thought, all in the hope that it would lead to something better, and lately it seemed that things were getting worse, regardless. She forced back a sigh. "What SHIELD can offer you isn't absolution, it's a job and a chance at expiation."

"Semantics," the girl said. 

"Philosophy was never my strong suit," Peggy said, smiling faintly, "but I think you'll find I'm much better at the long game."

The girl looked at her steadily for a moment. Her expression was utterly blank, a serenity fit to match that of a saint hewn from marble, but Peggy was adept at spotting where the cracks were. Anya had confessed once that she hadn't slept in days before Peggy had found her; Oksana's hands had trembled so hard she hadn't been able to pick up a gun again for months. 

"Natalia Alianovna," the girl said. Her breathing was rattling and uneven, Peggy could see that—not a panic attack, but perhaps close to one. "Natasha."

"Thank you, Natasha," Peggy said gently. That was enough for one day, she thought; no point in pushing too hard, too fast, whatever Natasha thought she was ready for. "I think I'll call for some more tea. The pot's almost empty, and I prefer an Assam blend with lunch, anyway. It's well after one, now, and I'm quite peckish." She nodded over at the house, getting the attention of one of the agents. 

More tea was procured, and a large tray covered with bowls of soup and plates of sandwiches. Peggy picked at her serving, but Natasha devoured hers with her ferocious focus and then fell asleep right there in her chair—as if her body had decided that it needed to shut itself off, and could, for now. 

Peggy sat for a while and watched Natasha, then stood and draped her lap blanket over the sleeping girl. She walked back into the house, leaving the agents to stand guard, and headed down a hallway to a small back room that had no panoramic views over the city. 

"Well?" Nick said. "Phil's optimistic, but I'm not."

"Good afternoon to you, too, Nicholas," Peggy said as she eased herself down into a chair, "and no, no need to thank an elderly woman for leaving her home to fly out here and play midwife for another one of your messes."

Nick snorted. "The day I think of you as an old woman is the day—"

"You are entirely accurate. No coddling, please. I think we owe one another that much."

Nick closed his laptop. "So? What's your assessment?" He canted his head, narrowed his one good eye at her. "You think she's too much for us to handle."

It was Peggy's turn to snort. "You've been married to Anya for twenty-five years. Don't sell yourself short."

"But this one's different."

"She's different," Peggy agreed. She played with her wedding ring, twisting it around her finger—an old tic, but one she didn't think she'd be able to indulge for much longer. If the arthritis got much worse, she'd have to remove it. "I don't think the problem will be a lack of commitment."

"Too much the other way?"

"Be careful how you treat her," Peggy said. "She might just end up trusting you."

From the look in his eye, that had caught Nick's attention—and Peggy felt once again as if she were perched on a rickety chair on the edge of a great ocean, trying to tell the tide to stop.


End file.
